I told her I should gobut she wanted to be a good host.
She said, "You’re staying put,"
and I agreed, weakly,
because I was doing everything weakly that day.

It was probably the Po’ Boy that did me in.
It was years after Katrina
but the waters down there were still polluted
and there was risk in the seafood
if you got it at the wrong place.
I never shopped fancy,
so maybe that was why I’d spent the last eight hours
puking and shitting everything I’d ever breathed in
out of my system and into every pipe her apartment had.

It wasn’t a good time.
She tried to be patient.
I tried to sleep through my misery.
We’d barely been getting along before my body betrayed me.
The illness might have made things better
until she saw I’d vomited in the tub.

"You have to clean that up!" she shouted
and I agreed, except I couldn’t quite hold my head up yet.
I went into the bathroom with a dishtowel and a bottle of bleach
and tried to wipe everything down
as much as things could make sense in my head.
As memory serves, I did a lousy job.

I could stand upright
in time for my flight back to New York.
I could pay bills
to make up for my lousy guesting
the last days of my stay.
I assume it doesn’t even things out,
but I think I got paid back in the end.